sincere: DGM: Cross is smiling faintly (somehow sentimental ;;)
I've now watched the first 4 episodes of Daredevil (why is it so fucking hard to find time to watch this show?! I want to watch it so much) and it's great. I like Matt, I like how they depict his senses, I like him and Claire and I would be fine if they were just awesome friends but I ship it pretty hard (KIIIISS), and wow this show is violent. All the over-the-top explosions in the world aren't as violent as watching men just punching each other for five minutes, or a nice long scene of a man using a car door to slowly beat another man's head off.

It occurred to me recently that politics and current events is sort of my fandom now. It updates constantly, I follow it and have emotional reactions to it, I want to talk about it with other people who enjoy it... So, to that end, I created a new community: [community profile] daily_liberal

My plan is to update it on a mostly daily basis with quotes from a linked news article and some thoughts about it. Discussion in the comments will be encouraged, and a socially liberal slant will be taken. I thought I might begin posting probably next Monday (har, 4/20) so as to have some posts up for the beginning of [community profile] three_weeks_for_dw... Although idk maybe I should wait since I'm going to Scotland the first week of May... But idk maybe I should start now because I am certainly bursting with opinions and listening to Fox News in the background of my life is slowly driving me insane!

Anyway, you can join if you want to read about current events stuff and then say words about it. That way I won't be talking to myself.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer (do not want ;;)
"It's not my responsibility to inject my child with chemicals in order for [a child like Maggie] to be supposedly healthy," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's very likely that her leukemia is from vaccinations in the first place." - a fucking lunatic

Her leukemia is from vaccinations

Her leukemia is from vaccinations

*SCREAMING FOREVER*

In the article he also said that how dare your dying child expect to have any form of life involving the outside of her bedroom, including interaction with her immediate family (her infant brother got the measles) and seeking healthcare (he got it while at a clinic)? It's unfortunate but she deserves to die if she goes anywhere where a person with an easily preventable illness who may not have any symptoms has been within the past 2 hours, which is the duration of time measles can survive in the air. I need my child to remain "pure" and free of chemicals except all the chemicals in his food and his drinks and on his clothing and in his toothpaste and in his shampoo and sldkfjslkgj I can't

Her leukemia is from vaccinations

sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer (a man's best friend ;;)
Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kickin' Kwanzaa, etc! As part of my family tradition, we went to see a movie for Christmas, and I don't care what anybody fucking says: the Hobbit was awesome. Battle of the Five Armies was everything I wanted.

...Basically what I wanted was just to see the rest of Thorin's story play out, so I wasn't really asking for much except that Jackson not fuck it up.

Thar be spoilers, just in case anyone hasn't read the book but wants to see the movies, I guess. )
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer (Default)
Oh, and I assume that by now everyone knows about the epic that is The Hawkeye Initiative? Excellent. Good.

Today while fumbling around on Dreamwidth I've seen a few angry posts about James Gunn's thoroughly gross comments about sluts and fags, but I haven't seen anyone who also posted or commented on the apology, in which he says that the post was intended to be satirical and it obviously failed, and he'll do better in the future, because he can't stand that sort of thing.

Now, there's no doubt that it failed. The kind of commentary that he was offering was not satirical, it was just reinforcing. If your commentary leaves good people going "DISGUSTING" and bad people going "YEAH, WHAT HE SAID" instead of [in the majority] good people smug and bad people uncomfortable, your satire-fu is weak, and you have failed.

But I respect the fact that he turned around and said, "Even though I didn't mean it seriously and would never mean it seriously, I completely understand your anger, and I am completely sorry."

I just wanted to put that out there, in case anyone hadn't seen it, and in case it eases any of the justified anger. I know it made me feel better about this guy being in charge of an MCU movie.

(Also, I love that blog, btw.)
sincere: TOA: Peony is disappointed (oh wait ;;)
So, two years late, I finally finished FFXIII. I had about a 40% disapproval rating for the beginning of the game, and about a 75% disapproval rating for the end of the game. It wasn't stellar and for a while I resented it so much that I genuinely reconsidered my plans to get FFXIII-2, and thought about maybe leaving the unpaid-for pre-order sitting in the store.

Warning: also contains spoilers for Tales of Vesperia and Kingdom Hearts 2, just for kicks. )
sincere: TOA: Ion hovers uncertainly (your eyes open ;;)
I'm going to explain why Plurk is the bane of my existence, and why I have been so much happier without it. Every time I go back, I inevitably see something that makes me twitch and close it again.

For a while, Plurk does make me feel, and I believe did make me feel, more in tune with people. It's amazing! Now I can be in touch with almost everyone, all the time! But the magic wears off. On Plurk, you're inundated with the thoughts of people who are near-strangers to you constantly, and there's a lot of reasons this might be problematic. Maybe you feel compelled to share things that didn't need to be shared. Maybe things you didn't even care about before now irritate you. Maybe you learn new, ugly things you didn't want to know about the people in your social circle. Maybe you just suffer overload: empathy fatigue and information flood all the time, every day, constantly sucking you in and sucking your spirit out.

And once the magic wears off, you're left with a lot of the following:
+ My games that you're not in are amazing!!!
+ Here are all the things I hate about that thing you love.
+ This is a passive-aggressive plurk designed to tell people you know and like that I am upset with them without actually saying so.
+ This is a plain old aggressive plurk about the players, characters, or situations that I hate.
+ Click here for the most depressing world and/or U.S. news update I could find.
+ Here is my inflammatory opinion about a topic that is going to make you grit your teeth, either because of me or because of the arguments within.
+ Today I feel like the worst human being in the whole world and I want to quit everything and move to Antarctica.
+ [meme] Tell me how awesome I am or I will assume you hate me, even though I ask you to do this in various ways four times each week!
+ [meme] Plot with me, if you're one of my favorite players!
+ I'm not "into" your game. or Your game is making me feel bad. or Your game is inferior to my other game.
+ Do you have an impending sense of doom about everything you enjoy yet? Let me add to it with my deliberately nonspecific brooding.
+ omg omg one of my 159 friends unfriended me on Plurk and I can't sleep until I find out who

Every single day. I have tried scaling back; I have 100 friends on Plurk but I only follow about 30 of them. But even then I get 40~ updates per hour. It's a lot. And it's exhausting. And it consumes you.

I'm not saying I'm not partially guilty myself, and I'm not saying you're a terrible person if you have ever made one of these plurks. On the contrary, I'm saying Plurk brings out that petty part of people, because Plurk is, itself, petty. These are all things present in our daily lives, but not pervasive. They're pervasive because 30 or 100 people updating you 2-3 times an hour on their life is bound to go there.

And when I shut myself off from that, I slowly get pieces of myself back. Like my patience and my tolerance and my enjoyment of my life.

I'm sorry, Plurk. Maybe it's just me. But I'm happier without you. I think we should stay casual acquaintances.
sincere: TOA: Peony is upbeat (oh hey ;;)
Things I'm Not Doing Today:
+ Tags
+ Writing
+ Translating
+ Looking at Plurk
+ Working, Really


Things I'm Doing Today:
+ Planning To Go Home, Lie Horizontally, And Read Cracked.com Articles Out Loud While [personal profile] rainfall Plays Final Fantasy XIII

...Looks good to me! Oh, hey, and

+ Where Is My Damn Bleach Chapter


ETA: Wait! I know. I'm boycotting internet productivity in protest about SOPA/PIPA. I am so trendy and on-topic. You wish you were all as principled as I am.

...Seriously though, that is a serious issue that you should all protest against if you don't know about it.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer (srs bizns ;;)
Okay, Dreamwidth. I am getting really tired of your "helpful" hover menu. >_>

The hover menu, ideally, would tell me the name of the journal in question, the keywords for the icon in question, and -- if there is an option to change the person's status in my circle -- at least make it require a second fucking click.

How many times do I have to accidentally add friends or grant access or remove access or remove friends before I get out off my lazy behind and see where I would go to suggest that they change this? Let's find out.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer (strange ways ;;)
I've been playing a lot of WoW. And I was reminded of something I love in this game.

One of the quest chains in Storm Peaks involves being disguised as a frost vrykul, a race of warriorlike half-giants who live in Northrend, who are highly, highly matriarchal, women (even enemy women) being well-regarded and respected, and men (even non-vrykul men) being considered worthy only to be slaves. The playable races have to be disguised as frost vrykul women to get by there, but once you do, it's sort of awesome.

A frost vrykul says to you, "Bears are beautiful creatures. Wild, strong, and fierce in battle. Much like us, sister."

I love the different standards of beauty. These women appreciate polar bears the way they think they, themselves, are beautiful. Because they're strong and difficult to control and they can fight.

There are many jokes and flirts that also indicate differing standards of beauty. (I always wince at the dwarf female flirt where she goes "I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I CAN FLATTEN STEEL WITH MY THIGHS." Honey, that-- that could be bad.) I really like thinking about some of them, although some of them are also a little strange/nonsensical/oh.

But my favorite is definitely "Single Draenei female seeks blacksmith with grinding wheel to take care of me and my gorgeous hooves."

She says it in such a fluffy tone. Her hooves are gorgeous. And she wants a man who can take care of them. I love it.

Female goblins are so cute and I'm in love with some of their lines. "I'm a free spirit. I don't like to be tied down. What? You mean literally? Oh no... totally into that."

/will return to regularly-scheduled Tales of Vesperia rambling shortly
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([dgm-kanda/lenalee] gloooooom)
Now caught up on the entire D. Gray-man anime, apparently for no reason. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, perhaps because I skipped approximately 30 episodes of filler. It was beautiful: there is a vast, tangential difference the moment you go from "Lenalee and Allen are investigating a nonsensical hospital drama situation for what amounts to no reason" and "Crowley goes on his first mission to a town where everyone wants to hold hands with their local akuma" to "OH MY GOD SUMAN DARK AHHHH ALLEN'S ARM HOLY CRAP".

The filler was very annoying, not least because it didn't seem to know where it was going. Like, at least three episodes of the filler were about Allen telling his backstory to everyone who would stand still long enough to listen. They actually had to make up a second traumatic backstory for him to tell Lenalee about, and it was perfectly redundant to the previous traumatic backstory he had told her about.

(I say this like I resent it, but I am not really resentful of the anime giving Allen a first boyfriend in India. I am taking that to heart, yes sir.)

I was starting to get annoyed by the signs of them cramming Allen/Lenalee implications down my throat. I think they're adorable -- as presented in the manga. That means Allen occasionally finds her flusteringly cute and she's oblivious, and they fall asleep on each other's shoulders, and not that Lenalee gets jealous and bitchy whenever Allen finds someone else pretty. And I like that despite finding her flusteringly cute, Allen doesn't seem to care one way or another about Bak stalking Lenalee, except when he can use it as blackmail material.

Anyway, I think it's really adorable, but I don't really like it as a pairing. Of course, I'm rapidly growing to have a complete disinterest in Main Male/Main Female pairings, so when I like it you know it's because it's good or sweet in a sincere way and not just because That's How It's Supposed To Happen... But I have legitimate reasons for my reservations about this particular pairing.

Here are my reservations about Allen/Lenalee. )
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([bleach-rangiku] busy girls multitask)
Writing for Yesterday
Another Side: 3264 words
The Last Dreamer: 790 words

I know those word counts look terrible, my massive fanfic opus compared to my actual awesome original stuff, but I'm trying to stick to a regular structure instead of just a lol-whenever structure with TLD. Since lol-whenever is my method with AS (I tend to do nothing, nothing, nothing, and then a sudden burst of AS whenever I'm inspired) it looks impressive now, but that impressiveness will definitely fade since I expect to only fill in a description or two for the next, oh, two weeks (since the next chapter is [livejournal.com profile] libekory).



I sincerely believe in my policy of hate the stupid fans, not the subject matter. A lot of people get all "I hate the KH fandom, so I hate KH! I hate the fans, so I hate Ichigo and Orihime!" but I believe this is, itself, stupid. There are intelligent fans and good reasons out there for everything. To say "I've never played X but I hate its fangirls, so I hate it!!"

Look, remember the saying, "A person is intelligent. People are stupid." You can't let a group of people change your view of the source material. You're missing out.

I live this belief. I hate the KH fandom, but I still enjoy KH. A lot of Ichigo/Rukia fans make me want to strangle someone, but that doesn't make me hate Ichigo and Rukia's relationship.

And I feel like other people don't do this. They write off pairings and fandoms just because they're too popular, or the fans are too something, or they feel the need to denigrate the relationship between two characters just because they don't like them as a ship.

TLDR: Hate the shipper, not the ship. Hate the fandom, not the series.

It's rapidly becoming my favorite saying.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([toa-asch] you suck)
A little while ago there was a secret on [livejournal.com profile] fandomsecrets. It stated that the anon secret-maker could never apply for a game where they used "god-modding" instead of the correct form, "god-moding".

Ever since I read that secret, it's been the same for me. It's always been a pet peeve of mine, but now it's actively more like a tic. I just can't play in your game if you don't know that it's god-mode, not god-mod. This is logically sound! God-mod does not make sense as a phrase! If the mod doesn't have godlike powers over the game, who does? Yes, an abusive mod can be a bad thing, but the phrase does not refer to abusive mods, does it? God mode, on the other hand, is a mode that overzealous players can slip into where they control other characters. Do you see how this concept works?

lern 2 english language

But it's such a stupid complaint that I'm sure I'd get laughed at if I said anything. I've had normal, intelligent people argue with me about whether or not it's god-mode or god-mod. I've seen people get really bitchy when even semantic portions of their RPs were criticized. And I'd feel bad pointing it out at every fucking RP I see, because they're all making this mistake sfdagsdf
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([ffxii-penelo] easy breezy)
One-line version: Very cute movie, but tragically stupid. Maybe a B?

First of all, let me explain what was cute. The animation was gorgeous. I thoroughly enjoyed the opening sequence, partly because it was tongue-in-cheek, and would've happily paid to watch that movie. I really thought that the fantasy characters were adorable, even Peter Pettigrew Nathaniel, with his incidental self-help course throughout the movie. I really, really liked the idea. I totally think kids and adults alike would both enjoy this movie: although there's lots of fun ingenuous moments, there's also a lot of tributes to other, older Disney classics in here that are fun to pick out and giggle over. The musical numbers are openly campy in places and really fun.

But by stupid I mean... )
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([kh-xigbar/demyx] just a day)
I can't write fic for Avatar, but damn if I can't invent pairings and make them plausible in three minutes or less.

[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: Okay, crack pairing formation time:
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: Sokka and Mai.
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: ....that one pains me a bit
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: Why?
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: Just. I can't imagine Sokka not punching her. XD
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: XD
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: While that would please me
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: throttling her while going "aaaaah!" in the way he does.
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: I posit in my imaginary space that he is such a relentless dork that he might make her laugh.
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: Which would make her ten times more bearable, if she displayed such a hint of humanity.
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: .....that would be awesome.
[livejournal.com profile] kay_willow: She could deliver the same cute lines that Zuko could ("I'm never happy.") and could beat up anyone other than her who dared make fun of him.
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: ....how do you do that. XD
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: how do you make this sound good.
[livejournal.com profile] maladaptive: ♥

On a bemused note, I went to a forum just for kicks and found such bashing of Zuko/Katara from not only Aang/Katara fans but also other fans that I felt like it was getting actively unfair treatment -- that I had wondered if this would be a Bleachesque pairing war, where Ichigo/Orihime is often actively derided despite just enjoying their happy corner of the internet, and I would feel morally obliged to be on the side of the nice people who were under attack.

...then I saw a Zuko/Katara fan enter the thread with such unmitigated fail ("If you don't like my pairings, I don't like you as a person!") that I promptly felt better (well, except to feel ashamed for liking her pairings, Zuko/Katara and Toph/Aang). At least it's not undeserved treatment. :D

Frankly, all the shippers are batshit. Learn to share, guys. I like both Zuko/Katara and Aang/Katara, and since all the shippers are batshit crazy, I'll just go on enjoying my happy place.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([kh-xigbar/demyx] just a day)
Everyone should go see Run Fatboy Run.

The end.
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([toa-anise] cha-ching)
Added to my list of ingenious ideas that no one is making, such as music-playing software that allows me to make playlists via tagging, is:

A fricking LJ killer already.

Seriously, only momentum and the total suck of its competitors is keeping this place going. They have not made a good PR decision in two years or more -- every time I hear about them, my reaction is, What the fuck?

But it keeps on chugging and they never get the message because they keep getting new members. (Well, HAH, now that you can't make basic accounts anymore, that might stop.)

And the reason they keep getting new members -- the reason most people don't really leave, even though the vast majority of its users all hate LJ by now -- is because every alternative to LJ sucks.

An overview of why every other journal site using LJ's code fails. )
What is so hard about this? Why do none of these sites follow the very basic rules of making websites? I know that it's hard to ramp up the amount of features and bandwidth LJ has, but -- how do you all fail this badly? There are only a few things I demand in my journal website:

--Search function. This is important.
--Not hideous; neat.
--Let me find things; usable.
--No stupid fucking theme. I am a user, not an inmate, and you are a website, not a morgue.
--Give me the ability to pay you to get a fricking ton of userpics.

If you do all of these things, you will have created a simple, professional service that can devour LJ's no-longer-loyal userbase and generate the bucks for you. I pay LJ and I think they're assholes.

The big problem, for me, is that I am extremely reluctant to move because I am in this journal thing for the community, not the exercise in writing. I have an LJ because there are communities for my fandoms and interests where people post routinely and share their thoughts and fanworks and discuss things that are on their mind; from these forums I make friends and create a social network. And so far none of these rival-wannabes have anything like cohesive communities, and so I will never join them.

The key to getting a community is to stop alienating people. Don't isolate your users by not letting them search for other users or communities. Don't be so ugly or unintuitive that no one can look at/bear to use your site. Don't call your users names or insult their intelligence or jeer at them with stupid omnipresent mascots. Let people have a variety of userpics right off the bat and you'll own the RP crowd.

Then people will join your site. And maybe you'll get a community. And maybe I'll join.

I swear, if I had any business sense, I'd make a fortune... A, anyone wanna help?? D:
sincere: DGM: Lenalee's back to the viewer ([toa-peony] magnetic)
I'm not sure what to make of the Peony Gaiden. I read it and it doesn't quite jive with what I understand to be canon and/or logical, and then it doesn't help that the romantic-centric plot could've been dreamed up by a preteen girl. (Which is so strange, it's so utterly different than the intrigue and characterization at work in the Asch and Ion Gaidens.)

Timeline and adoption. )

Well, for my part, I'm going to take the gist of it -- tragic romance -- and I'll bring that to my own RP as Peony. (Although man, he was kind of a dick back then. It was all very romantic, but he was still kind of a dick! I'm glad he got over himself.) But I'm definitely not taking the specifics. XD